25 Pfennig, Creditbank zu Hann. Münden, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00421
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
bank_1: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
bank_2: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Grade: AU (IBNS)
Bright; light corner wear. About uncurrent: bright and unfolded, with light handling - a corner bump or a faint edge tone. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which cannot show paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
Estimated value: $8 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
Dimensions: 83.2 × 54.3 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Lower Saxony Private issue Bank issue

The type

Type: 25 Pfennig, Creditbank zu Hann. Münden, 1921
Printer: Franz Scherrer, Hannover
Rarity: common

Hann. MündenGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

A cooperative bank's own money: Banks issuing Notgeld is rarer than towns doing it, and a small cooperative doing so is rarer still. Redemption was at its counter and nowhere else.
Die Tilly-Schanze: The reverse shows the lookout tower above the town, named for the imperial general who stormed Münden in 1626 and put most of its people to the sword.
Franz Scherrer, Hannover: Printed thirty miles north, on a note whose whole guarantee was one small bank's balance sheet.

What was happening

Notgeld began in 1914 out of necessity: coin vanished into hoards within weeks of mobilisation and towns printed their own small change because the Reichsbank could not supply enough.

By 1920 it had become something else. The shortage was easing but the collector market was not, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never be presented. So the municipalities commissioned Serienscheine: lithographed sets, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - a legend, a famous son, a battle, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made by places with a few thousand inhabitants, in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

Not a town but a bank: the Creditbank zu Hann. Münden e.G.m.b.H., a registered cooperative, issuing its own twenty-five-Pfennig vouchers in July 1921 against its own counter, valid to 31 March 1922.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Creditbank zu Hann. Münden, 1921 in the collection.

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